The Ulumussa Episode
by mercurybard
Summary: Dak's been seriously wounded in a fight, and now everything is left in Jiub's hands. But what happens when the Dunmer thief experiences a crisis of faith?
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: I don't own _Morrowind_. No harm meant by this.

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DAK

_I'm in a cave. It's cold and damp and smells of rotting things. I don't know why bandits make places like this their home. It reminds me too much of sewers, and I always hated the sewers. Rats lived in the sewers, and I've always hated rats._

_Jiub is here as well, tending to my cracked ribs and to my head, which is pounding. He's rambling on and on about nothing as he works. His gray fingers move gently, but every time he touches me, pain explodes like a star falling from the heavens, leaving a tail of agony in its wake. I'd tell him to stop touching me, but my lips are bruised—swollen to the point that I can't work them properly. I think I bit my tongue in the fight. I keep tasting blood on my lips. Blood's got to come from somewhere. Everything's got to come from somewhere…like that Nord man we met back in Seyda Neen, right before we left for Balmora. Er…well, in the direction of Balmora. We still haven't gotten there yet. I'm not sure I'm ever going to make it. Fucking warhammer. Damn it and damn the thug that was swinging it. Feels like my brain's swollen too big for my skull. I don't think I've ever gotten this close to death before—except maybe after I broke into that cult's church. In the sewers. I hate sewers…they always have rats. _

_Shor, I can't think. Why can't I think?_

_Because you're dying, idiot._

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Yup, Dak and Jiub (that wacky duo from 'On the Devil's Doorstep') are back. This is much, much earlier in their adventures together. They are only a few days out of Seyda Neen at this point.


	2. Chapter 2

Disclaimer: I don't own _Morrowind_. No harm intended.

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But Dak didn't die. Instead, she lay on the cusp of death for close to a week. Jiub had laid her on the bedroll of one of the smuggler's she'd killed and did his best to nurse her. He wasn't a healer by any stretch of the imagination, but he did what he could.

The bodies, he'd stripped and dragged outside. The man—the one who had hurt Dak so badly with the warhammer—was the first to be removed. It'd taken Jiub almost the entire day to drum up the courage to touch the corpse, which bore the mark of Dak's staff on his temple. He hadn't lied in the swamps when he told Dak he hated dead people…but he hadn't told her why.

It was the smell, he supposed, since it never matter what race or age or gender the corpse was. The smell called to mind the swampy Deshaan Plain where he'd grown up, working as the child of free laborers on a saltrice plantation of House Dres. There had been plenty of death there, especially among the Argonian slaves who worked the land but without receiving pay. The smell never quite went away as the slaves collapsed daily from the heat and starvation and disease.

In the end, he'd managed to drag both corpses outside, and scavengers came in the night and removed them further. He didn't mind. The dark elf still got a clenching feeling in his gut every time he looked at Dak and saw the damage the warhammer had done. Her face was a mess of bruises, and he was extremely surprised that a close inspection of her skull had revealed no fractures. Her ribs though—they were black with bruises and cracked in several places. He'd fed the few health potions they'd acquired on the road to her, careful of her bruised and swollen lips. Now, all he could do was wait for her to decide whether or not she wanted to die.

Several times, his thoughts turned towards abandoning her. She certainly wasn't the easiest person to deal with—what with her rude, brusque manner, and her bad habit of getting drunk at every possible opportunity. And, she was a sloppy drunk, prone to passing out and vomiting. Jiub liked a cup of flin now and again as much as the next mer, but Dak took drinking much too seriously. It was like she was trying to lose herself in the bottom of a bottle.

But, for whatever reason, he couldn't just walk out and leave her to die. Unlike her, he wasn't a murderer.

Their map—a crumbling piece of parchment they'd gotten from an old Altmer woman in Seyda Neen—said the cave they were in was called Ulummusa. Four days and she still hadn't woken up. The Nord woman just wouldn't die, though her body was damaged to seemingly beyond all hope…at least in their current situation. Jiub traced the line representing the road that ran near the cave. She needed a healer. The closest one would be at Fort Pelagiad. To get there would mean backtracking, but he wasn't nearly that desperate to get to Balmora that he cared.

Swallowing, he rolled the map closed and looked over to where Dak lay stretched out on the pallet. Her white face was now black and purple with bruises, one eye swollen shut. He thought, perhaps, that her cheekbone was broken, but the swelling was still too bad to tell for sure.

She was too heavy to carry. Jiub fancied himself to be a fairly strong mer, but she was nearly a head taller than he was, not to mention more muscular. He'd have to drag her, he realized. The blanket she was laying under would work well enough. The thief laid it out flat on the cave floor and then gently rolled her into the middle. A moan escaped from her blackened lips, but she didn't regain consciousness. Mercifully.

Picking up two corners, he gave the blanket an experimental tug. "By the Tribunal, why couldn't you be a wood elf?" he muttered through gritted teeth. Suddenly, that little line on the map seemed to stretch on for forever in his mind.


	3. Chapter 3

Disclaimer: I don't own _Morrowind_. This yarn is just for fun. No harm intended.

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It had been night when they emerged from the cave. It was sunrise by the time they reached the edge of town. Jiub looked up the gentle hill at the road that led through the center of Pelagiad and the stone fort sitting at the end of it. He looked up at it and flopped down in the middle of the road beside Dak. His arms and back were on fire. Even his legs burned with fatigue. He just didn't have the energy to get them the last few hundred yards.

He must have nodded off because the next thing he knew, someone was nudging him in the ribs with a steel boot. With a groan of protest, he peeled his eyelids apart…and immediately shut them again. The sun was right overhead and ungodly bright.

"Up, ya drunk!" a gruff voice commanded, and the boot made contact with Jiub's ribs again.

"We need…" he tried to explain as he forced himself to sit up. "She needs a healer." His vision came into focus, and he saw that the boot and voice belonged to an Imperial guard. Past him, a traders' caravan waited impatiently for Jiub and Dak to clear the road.

The look the guard gave him was one of disbelief—despite Dak's obviously bad condition. Nevertheless, the guard gestured for two of the men from the caravan to hoist the Nord woman in her blanket and carry her off to the fort.

"Thanks," Jiub said as he climbed to his feet, staggering a little as his sore muscles protested.

The guard watched him wobble with impassive eyes, his face partially shadowed by his open-faced helm. "What happened?" the guard demanded once Jiub had his feet solidly under him.

"Bandits."

The guard's eyes raked over him, and suddenly, Jiub was aware of just how shabby his clothes and armor were. "Why would bandits attack _you_?"

He swallowed. "We blundered into their cave, trying to get out of the rain." And his grandma could walk on water while juggling mud crabs, but it _sounded_ plausible enough, and it had been pouring when Dak had led him into that cave. The guard didn't need to know that she'd gone in just spoiling for a fight.

"Which cave?"

"Place called 'Ulummusa' on my map."

"To the north of here?"

Jiub nodded.

"You wouldn't have, by any chance, taken anything from the cave?"

Jiub fought the urge to swallow nervously again as the guard's eyes bored into him. To be honest, after Dak had collapsed, his mind had been on other things besides looting. He was a bad thief like that. "I ate some of the food that was in there and gave her a cheap health potion I found…oh, and there was this…" Dropping one strap of his pack from his shoulder, he let the bag swing around to the front. Opening it, he pulled out the small silver bowl he'd found sitting on a chest in the cave. It'd been the only decent piece of loot in the entire hideout, and he was loath to part with it, but this guard seemed suspicious enough to search his person, and how was Jiub supposed to explain away its presence in his pack—especially since it had the name 'Armond Beluelle' engraved on it? "I was going to try and find the owner. It looks like a commemorative piece—I'm sure somebody's missing it." He gave the guard his most charming smile and hoped it came across as innocent.

The guard's suspicion didn't decrease an iota, but neither did he take away the bowl. "Beluelle—name sounds familiar. You might want to try asking up at the fort. Ygfa, the healer, knows everyone in these parts. Stay out of trouble." The last was a growled warning. Once delivered, the guard turned back to directing the caravan into the village.

Jiub too turned and started up the street that led to Fort Pelagiad. Surrounded by gently rolling farmland, the town looked as if it had been lifted straight out of Cyrodil. The buildings all followed the basic Imperial-style of architecture, constructed from gray stone, hard wood planks, and thatch. A tavern was to his left, its door propped open as the barmaid swept. It was early enough in the day that any visitors who had stayed overnight in the second-floor lodgings were still abed. Beyond the tavern was a side road leading down the hill into a residential area of cottages surrounded by small garden plots. On the right side sat a blacksmith's shop and a trader's. The sight of the hammer and anvil on the smith's shingle reminded Jiub that his cuirass was in dire need of repair. One of the netch leather lames had split during the fight with the bandits, and it now flapped loose against his back each time he took a step.

"Dak first, repairs later," he whispered as he passed through the fort's gate and made his way across the grassy courtyard.


	4. Chapter 4

Disclaimer: I don't own _Morrowind._ The prayers that Jiub says at the end are taken from two in-game books:_ Saryoni's Sermons _and _Book of Dusk and Dawn_. If you've never bothered to read in the books in the game, I suggest spending some time with them—they are fascinating.

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The traders had taken her directly to the tiny Imperial Cult chapel at the back of the fort and laid her on the ground in front of the altar. Stretched out like that, her head lolling to the side, she looked like a sacrificial animal about to be presented to some daedra prince. Jiub shook his head, trying to push the disturbing thought from his mind.

A thin, middle-aged Nord woman with closely cropped yellow hair squatted by Dak's head, eyeing the injured woman critically. Judging by her simple but clean green robes, this was the chapel's keeper.

The woman looked up as Jiub stepped into the chapel doorway. "You are the friend they mentioned?"

He nodded, unsure of when he'd started to consider Dak a friend. Somewhere between the prison ship and here, he realized with a sinking feeling—maybe as early as when she first puked on him on the boat. "How is she?"

The priestess straightened, moving stiffly and favoring her right leg. "Dying," she informed him bluntly, "But yet not. She's got a foul temper when she's awake, doesn't she?"

He nodded again. "You can tell that just by looking at her?"

She snorted. "It's pretty obvious that she's the better warrior of you two, but nonetheless, she took the worse beating. Since I'm not seeing any defensive wounds, I'm inclined to believe that she kept charging into the fray with little regard for her safety, so she's either crazy or she was enraged. Now, get out—if I'm going to heal your friend, then I'm going to need to pray."

The priestess turned her back on him—just assuming that he would follow her directions—and knelt before the altar, folding her hands before her.

Jiub backed out of the room, relieved that she had dismissed him rather than trying to coax him into praying with her. It had happened before. He was a dark elf, born and raised in Morrowind—he'd been brought up paying homage to the Tribunal and never quite knew what to do with the empire's Nine Divines. He settled himself in a corner just outside the chapel and folded his legs in front of him.

Fort Pelagiad wasn't particularly large, though it was big enough to house everyone from the town and surrounding countryside in case of a siege. He was sitting in the main hall right now, watching a female orc armorer going about her work. The rhythmic tapping of the hammer as she pounded rivets into a piece of leather started to lull him to sleep. Jiub leaned his head back against the stones of the wall and closed his eyes. He couldn't remember the last time he'd prayed…yes, he did. It had been in Necrom, just before he had gone into that last tomb and everything had gone so very wrong. His fingers crept up to rub at the dried up orb that was all that was left of his right eye.

_I was greedy and stupid to think that Vivec would protect me as I plundered a tomb holding the sacred remains of one of his people. 'Engrave upon thy eye the image of injustice'—that was the lesson I failed to take to heart, so Vivec forced it physically upon me._

"I have not been generous. I have not been humble _or_ proud," he whispered to himself. "And I haven't been particularly smart either." He leaned forward again and folded his hands in his lap. It had been years since he had said studied the sermons of Lord Vivec, but the words came easily to his lips, having been drummed into him by his pious mother so long ago. "'Thank you for your justice, Lord Vivec. I shall be neither cruel nor arbitrary, for fair dealing earns the love, trust, and respect of our people. Thank you for your pride, Lord Vivec. I shall not doubt myself, or my people, or my gods, and shall insist upon them, and my ancient rights. Thank you for your generosity, Lord Vivec. I shall neither hoard nor steal, nor encumber myself with profitless treasures, but shall share freely among house and hearth…'"

A hand touched his shoulder, startling him from his prayer. He looked up to find Ygfa standing over him, her wrinkled face looking even more worn. "I have healed your friend. She should wake up soon," the priestess informed him.

"Thank you," he said to both her and to his gods.


	5. Chapter 5

Disclaimer: I don't own _Morrowind_. No harm intended.

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Dak's eyes were open and followed him as he stepped back into the chapel. Jiub crouched down beside her where she lay still stretched out on the floor. The bruises on her face were rapidly fading to a sickly yellow. By morning tomorrow, they would be gone except for the ones that blossomed over her cheekbone. It must have been broken, but the healer had restored it to its proper place around the eye socket. The Nord woman was lucky she hadn't gone blind.

"Why're you here?" Dak asked, her voice raspy and weak. She tried to sit up, but he shoved her back down. Ygfa hadn't said anything about her staying still, but it didn't take a genius to realize that the last thing Dak needed right now was to strain herself. "I thought you'd be to Balmora right now."

"What? You thought I was going to leave you to die?" he asked, smiling. "I couldn't do that. Besides, you would have done the same for me."

But she wouldn't have—they both knew that. And a week ago, he wouldn't have either. She was surly, violent drunk, and the Three knew he wasn't much better. Maybe that's why the guards had thrown them together on the prison ship. Maybe that's why he couldn't walk away when she lay on the cusp of life and death.

"Yeah…sure," she murmured, her pale eyes turning away from his face so he wouldn't see the lie in them.

"Listen, I found a bowl in that cave we were in. I was planning on returning it to its owner. You want to come with?"

Dak rolled her head back in his direction. "What kind of thief are you?"

His smile widened. "Not a very good one. What kind of murderer are you?"

"A very good one."

"Well, then, I'm sure we'll find someway to work this arrangement out. Partners?" He held his hand out to her.

She clasped it with a strength he didn't know she had at the moment. "Partners, then, until something better comes along."

He really couldn't ask for more.

_finis_


End file.
